When Simon Parkes was elected to the town council in Whitby, England last month, nobody was aware of his lifelong conviction that his real mother is actually a nine-foot-tall, eight-fingered space alien with a kite-shaped face.

The reason extraterrestrials are interested in me is not because of my physical body, but because of what is inside me. My soul.

Now that the election's over, the rest of the Whitby Town Council are only now becoming aware that Parkes' cosmic mother has the power to relay telepathic messages through his optic nerves. To Parkes' credit, he's incredibly humble about being the golden child of a clandestine intergalactic cabal:

It's a personal matter and it doesn't affect my work. I'm more interested in fixing someone's leaking roof or potholes. People don't want me to talk about aliens.

I get more common sense out of the aliens than out of Scarborough Town Hall. The aliens are far more aware of stuff. People in the Town Hall seem not to be aware of the needs of Whitby.

In fact, Parkes is a smidge aggrieved that other religious beliefs get a free pass, whereas his encounter with an eight-foot-tall alien doctor dressed as a waiter (who cured his childhood chicken pox) apparently disqualifies him from public office. Hey, I wager there are more than a few lapsed Unarians who'd happily intern for his reelection campaign.